Recess Week Event: Admission to the hospital

I was admitted to the hospital for 3 days during this recess week. While I was at the school’s library on Monday, I had a fainting spell while I was surfing the computer. I knew that strange feeling of breathlessness and darkening of vision was symptomatic of an impending faint, and walked towards the corridor towards where the librarians were so that I may call for help if I should faint. Indeed, my body started feeling weaker and my vision became fuzzier as I walked down the corridor. I was losing balance and bumped my head on the corridor wall. I called for help as I prepared myself to fall to the ground as smoothly as possible without hitting my head. The librarians did come to my aid, as well as a fellow Varsity Christian Fellowship senior. I did not lose consciousness throughout the entire experience. I told the people around me to call for an ambulance. Perhaps I may have been overreacting. However, I think my fear was that I might be suffering from a possible stroke or heart failure. There are all the news these days of youths in rather healthy state dying suddenly from mysterious heart failures.

Perhaps I should reveal a truth as to what could have caused my fainting spell. It might have been a panic attack brought about by my surfing of the internet of what may be causing the rather strange pressure I seem to be experiencing in my head these days for at least 2 months now. I hypothesized that I may be having a brain aneurysm and looked up the internet about it. Reading about the symptoms that characterizes brain aneurysm on the internet had a sort of affirming effect of my fears. The panic attack triggered as spontaneously as I read about the symptoms of brain aneurysm on the internet and speculated that I might be having this condition.

The ambulance came, and I was warded at Alexandra Hospital for 3 days. There were quite some tests done, including a number of blood tests, and ECG, and EEG, and even an MRI. I suppose I wouldn’t have warranted such attention in medical treatment had I not told the doctors who were at the emergency department upon my admission that I had been suffering from nervous tics for the past few months. The senior doctor thought that it was necessary to scan the brain to eliminate for the possibility of a neurological problem. I refused to have a brain CT scan done upon me because I have read that the radiation exposure from a brain CT scan was very high and disposed the patient to future risks of brain tumors. I have read that the MRI was a safe way to diagnosed for brain problems because it used magnetic fields which did not have any radiation.

Anyway, the various tests done upon me revealed that I was not suffering from anything abnormal. The diagnosis at the end of my hospital stay was “near syncopation” which means that I nearly had a loss of consciousness. Such a diagnosis merely describes the symptom of my fainting spell rather than stipulating the cause of it. It is a relief though that there is nothing physically abnormal that caused my fainting spell. I suppose the released MRI scan that reveals that my brain is normal and healthy would go some way to alleviating me of my incessant hypochondriacal worries that I have brain problems. I suppose if there is any benefit from the entire experience, I would be able to concentrate better now in my studies because I would not obsess so much about health related worries about my brain.

This entire episode confirms to me the extent of my hypochondria. I suppose I should really be skeptical about worries relating to health because time and again, medical tests have shown that I am really normal. I have gone for the likes of a heart ultrasound scan when I suspected that I had ectopic heartbeats and nothing wrong was diagnosed with my heart. I have gone for numerous audiogram to test my hearing because I suspected I had hearing loss but they have revealed that my hearing is normal. I have also gone for a blood test to test for mercury in my blood because I feared that I had mercury poisoning after breaking a school laboratory monitor during my secondary school O level physics science practical examination. This MRI scan is really the ultimate, and it too have revealed that my worry had been misplaced. I have no brain aneurysm as I had been worried about.

I hope that I would not suffer any more hypochondrias in the future. There is always the danger that I start worrying again about things like whether I have brain tumor from radiation exposure from mobile phones . I really am predisposed to hypochondria.

The only medical condition that I seem to have officially diagnosed about myself is Asperger’s Syndrome. However, even that is dubitable. During my stay at the hospital, when the doctors have cleared me of suffering from any physiological abnormalities at the end of all the tests and checkups, a psychiatrist or psychologist came over to my ward to talk to me about possible psychological treatments. One thing that he seemed to be skeptical about was whether I was indeed suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome since I appeared quite normal to him in my conversation. It confuses me as to whether I truly have this condition, or it is a typical case of a psychologist whimsically diagnosing a patient from the array of supposed disorders they have created to label people. But I refrain from presuming too quickly that I am indeed simply normal because I think I do experience a sort of social difficulty which I do not perceive other “normal” people around me experiencing.